Surprised Split Fiction didn't make it.

Hades 2 is my pick but I know the winner is most likely going to be either E33, DS2, or Silksong.

Biggest snub for me in general has to be Lumines Arise. Game is phenomenal! Top 5 of the year for me. An experience that is dedicated to the sensations that it gives you. Nothing else like it. I easily could've seen it be nominated for Art Direction, Sim/Stategy, VR/AR, Accessibility, Audio Design, Score & Music, and maaaaaaybe Family, but I guess the game released too close to the cutoff date.

Geoff and his stupid mid November cutoff for his games show that's supposed to cover the entire calendar year.

I'm genuinely surprised Split Fiction isn't a GOTY nominee with it being even better critically received than It Takes Two. 2025 is an incredible year but I do think it got robbed since while Silksong is great it deserves it more than that. At least it's one of the most nominated games in total.

How did Bananza get nominated for GOTY when it couldn't even get nominated as one of the best games in its own genre category? Has that ever happened before?

Seems like a token nomination so that they don't get accused of being anti-Nintendo, while still giving 86 Metacritic Sony games 8 nominations.

Nintendo is probably happy to get nominated for the best family category at least, helps their PR to sell games to families, but they are 100 % irrelevant to the game awards compared to Sony and will remain so.

Indeed. Me thinks they actually wanted to nominate Ghost of Yotei for GOTY, but they felt 2 Sony games in the same category whilst no Nintendo game would be an overkill, so they decided for DK and let Ghost of Yotei in best action adventure game 

This is still an award to celebrate the industry itself, so not having a Nintendo game in the year they had the most sucessful console launch ever made would definitely raise concerns and upset Nintendo's fandom

IMO it’s not necessarily that I perceive TGA as being “anti-Nintendo” as much as it is that TGA is overly fixated on western AAA gaming appeals. There is no reason in a year as diverse as 2025 that the big two western AAA releases (GoY, DS2) should accumulate *16 nominations*, leaving all other publishers with nothing but crumbs.

I’m sure if you broke down the statistics for “Percentage of games developed in US/EU v. JP,” you’d find the bias very quickly. No Sonic 3 for best adaptation, nor Trails in the Sky for RPG, no Dispatch for Narrative, DKBananza only receiving Best Family and (miraculously) Best Overall, MKWorld nor Sonic Racing CW not qualifying for Best Multiplayer, etc. Yet all of these western developed/focused titles dominate the awards.

Funnily enough, I finally got around playing Hades 1. If the second one is even half the masterpiece that Hades 1 is, it deserves to be right there with the others.

When does Clair obscur start getting good? I played through the opening and it just did not hook me at all.

Eh, I don't know, opinions are opinions. I've played a bit of MK World and DK Bananza and I found both of them to be a 7.5/10 at best. They're fun, they're fine, they're nothing special. Clearly I'm in the minority with Bananza and so I'm not surprised it got the GotY nomination, but I don't think it deserves that at all.

I think Hades II is a huge improvement overall in pretty much every area. It seriously blew me away, hope it can do that for you as well. But take your time with the first game, it is amazing and deserves to be enjoyed for a long time.

In the opening

It's actually even better than the first and this comes from someone who gave 4.5 stars to the first. Melionoe's gameplay allows for more creative builds and variety in combat

There are more levels, more bosses (with more interesting mechanics and movesets), more quests, better missions and more systems for metaprogression. The story is also better. Technically the game also improved in art and personally the OST is just more memorable than the first one

And in Hades 2 you can date Icarus, so of course it's better